ojan manner, by his aunt and uncle.

On these things Robin reflected as he tried to twist his tie into a
fitting Trojan shape; but it refused to behave as a well-educated tie
should, and the obvious thing was to get another. Robin looked at his
watch. It was really extremely provoking; the carriage had been timed
to arrive at half-past six exactly; it was now a quarter to seven and
no one had appeared. There was probably not time to search for another
tie. His father would be certain to arrive at the very moment when one
tie was on and the other not yet on, which meant that Robin would be
late; and if there was one thing that a Trojan hated more than another
it was being late. With many people unpunctuality was a fault, with a
Trojan it was a crime; it was what was known as an "odds and ends"--one
of those things, like untidiness, eating your fish with a steel knife
and wearing a white tie with a short dinner-jacket, that marked a man,
once and for all, as some one outside the pale, an impossible person.

Therefore Robin allowed his tie to remain and walked to the open window.

"At any rate," he said to himself, still thinking of his tie, "father
won't probably notice it." He wondered how much his father _would_
notice. "As he's a Trojan," he thought, "he'll know the sort of things
that a fellow ought to do, even though he has been out in New Zealand
all his life."

It would, Robin reflected, be a very pretty little scene. He liked
scenes, and, if this one were properly manoeuvred, he ought to be its
very interesting and satisfactory centre. That was why it was really a
pity about the tie.

The door from the library swung slowly open, and Sir Jeremy Trojan,
Robin's grandfather, was wheeled into the room.

He was very old indeed, and the only part of his face that seemed alive
were his eyes; they were continually darting from one end of the room
to the other, they were never still; but, for the rest, he scarcely
moved. His skin was dried and brown like a mummy's, and even when he
spoke, his lips hardly stirred. He was in evening dress, his legs
wrapped tightly in rugs; his chair was wheeled by a servant who was
evidently perfectly trained in all the Trojan ways of propriety and
decorum.

"Well, grandfather," said Robin, turning back from the window with the
look of annoyance still on his face, "how are you to-night?" Robin
always shouted at his grandfather although he knew perfectly well that
he was n